It has been over two months since voters in Colorado and Washington State chose to legalize marijuana for adults and there still hasn’t been any real indication how the Obama administration will respond. While US Attorney General Eric Holder continues to remain non-committal about the administration’s plans, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) seem to have developed a mostly positive impression from a recent meeting with Holder. From the Seattle Times:

Inslee and state Attorney General Bob Ferguson met with Holder because of the conflict between federal law, which bans all marijuana, and the state’s law, which makes possession of an ounce of pot legal for those 21 and older.

Inslee said the 45-minute conversation was “very satisfying” and a “confidence-builder” about the state’s ability to move forward implementing legal marijuana. “We went in thinking we should continue with rule-making and nothing I heard should dissuade us,” Inslee said.

At the same time, he stressed that Holder said nothing about the federal government’s intentions and whether it would crack down on Washington state or look the other way.

A non-response it better than a directly negative one but is no guarantee. It is still roughly a year until the first marijuana businesses regulated by the new law are set to open and that gives the administration a long time to decide how they will deal with this federal/state conflict.

So far the only thing anyone has to go on are a few generic statements and vague hints from the administration. While it is a positive development that Inslee seems mostly satisfied with his meeting with Holder, everyone is still trying to read the tea leaves at this point.

9 Responses to “Eric Holder Still Non-Committal About Federal Response to State Legalization Law”

I got this in my email box, possibly from NORML? circa Jan 9th 2013:
Washington, DC – Fallout from the Obama Administration’s aggressive federal enforcement in medical marijuana states has reached a fever pitch this month with three people being sentenced, two others due to surrender to federal authorities to serve out sentences of up to five years in prison, and one federal trial in Montana currently scheduled for January 14th. Two of the three people being sentenced in the coming month — Montana cultivator Chris Williams and Los Angeles-area dispensary operator Aaron Sandusky — face five and ten years to life, respectively.

“The number of sick patients being locked up by the Obama Administration is unprecedented and deplorable,” said Kris Hermes, spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access, the country’s leading medical marijuana advocacy organization.

“Aggressive enforcement is an unacceptable means of addressing medical marijuana as a public health issue,” continued Hermes. “The Obama Administration is lying to the American people when it says it’s not targeting individual patients and these cases are clear evidence of that.” Montana patient cultivator Richard Flor died in August while serving out a 5-year prison sentence.

Five cultivators claiming to be in compliance with Michigan’s medical marijuana law were sentenced in October. Two of the cultivators — Jaycob Montague and Jeremy Duval — are already serving their prison terms of 18 months and 5 years, respectively, and two others — John Marcinkewciz and Shelley Waldron — are scheduled to surrender to federal authorities on January 8th and 10th, respectively. Waldron will be imprisoned for 18 months and Marcinkewciz for 5 years.
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People in California, who did everything possible to abide by state and county and sometimes city, town and village decrees are being sent up the river. SHAME! Eric Holder!

Meanwhile, If “Sixty Minutes” TV and Frontline PBS TV are to believed, few criminals involved in ongoing Wall Street activities are going to be held accountable for destroying the economy.

And not trying to change the subject here, but if one could link legal marijuana with Wall St investment banking perhaps it can become TBTF.

By all means avoid being a whistle blower, download PDF documents, or have an affair while running for President as the DOJ has repeatedly demonstrated it will prosecute with bulldog like tenacity for those actions.

All joking aside, I think the only hope these states have in blocking prosecution is to have supporters show up in front of the White House and embarrass the heck out of the President.

But, what would the Prison Industrial Complex do, if they couldn’t put the screws onto people, like me an you. They’d have to go and do some real investigative work, And lord help us, arrest some smarmy, punk ass white collar jerk. But their lawyers would say, ” hey this guys good at algorithm design ” especially, it appears of the divide and conquer kind. The judges, I’ll conclude, will make another exception. It’s not a Grand Illusion, really, more like The Grand Deception.

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silence on holder’s behalf (as identified quite clearly in all reportage of this meeting between honest state authorities who have a vision to bring the public will to fruition in a rational way that takes serious account of public safety and dishonest federal officials who are not interested in the will of the public but are sycophantic to the prison industrial complex and to drug warriors who carry out the bigoted ‘war on drugs’ that imperils public safety) can only indicate that obama’s justice department’s plan is to go ‘full bore’ in implementing the enforcement scheme that it has used in California, let MJ be legal but make it impossible for users, even the sick, to access the legal product -

I ask all of you dems out there to consider how obama’s aggressive attack on the nation’s sick patients, many of whom have life long debilitating diseases that cause unbelievable pain and discomfort, is the exact same stance taken by republicans and democrats who have used their power to limit the ability of pregnant women to be able to access abortion services, a legal medical procedure in the US for 50 years. In Washington state cannabis has been medicine for more than 10 years –

we have a Democrat in the white house who has used all of his power and the power of the state to make it impossible for sick Americans to access beneficial medicine…